Food systems are “inseparably linked” to the climate change crisis and transforming — through both adaptation and mitigation — the way the world grows, transports, and eats its food, according to the 2022 Global Food Policy report.
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That will require a scale up of investment for areas such as research and development and reappropriating agricultural subsidies, it said.
The annual document, released Thursday by the International Food Policy Research Institute, is aimed less at introducing new information, but rather presenting a summary of existing evidence around the links between food and climate and making recommendations for why policy change is needed immediately.
“We’ve obviously been concerned for a long time that it is going to get warmer and more uncertain in places where they already have difficulty producing enough food. And this could be a real problem,” Channing Arndt, director of IFPRI’s environment and production technology division and a lead editor of the report, told Devex.
“What are things that governments or other agents in developing countries really should be doing today in order to confront climate change?”
Arndt said the report is meant to be policy-oriented and outlines six priority areas.
It calls for more investment in research and development for “disruptive” technology innovations, such as in irrigation systems and the cold chain, which “could accelerate sustainable food systems transformation.” Public investment in such innovations should be doubled from current levels, ensuring at least $15 billion goes toward food systems in low- and middle-income countries.
The report also said there must be improved management of land and water resources. Policy should ensure there are no “undesirable trade-offs” in development goals, finding a balance between the additional energy required to increase productivity while not contributing further to fossil fuel emissions.
“A lot of this has to do with what we call public goods, things that people don’t own privately and therefore markets have difficulty working,” Arndt said. “So you need governance mechanisms often to worry about the level of emissions from agriculture or any other sets of pollutants.”
Healthy diets and sustainable food production must also be prioritized, the report added. Reducing consumption of highly processed foods and red meats will improve food’s ecological footprint. The report also encouraged the adoption of national dietary guidelines by governments.
Value chains need to be made more efficient and support “free and open” trade, which the report calls “an integral part of climate-smart agricultural and food policies.”
“[Trade] is a really important mechanism for dealing with shocks. Especially if production doesn’t become too overly concentrated in particular areas," Arndt said. "Broadly speaking, you take, for example, wheat production, and a fair amount of it [is] concentrated as exporting from Ukraine and Russia.”
“The world wheat market really doesn’t care why exactly Ukrainian wheat is not being exported from Odesa. It could be because of a terrible drought or it could be because of a terrible war.”
But trade can help even out any imbalance when production is disrupted, whatever the cause, Arndt said.
Social protection programs must guard poor rural populations, which make their living from agriculture, against the worst effects of climate change. These programs are “another way to deal with the more uncertain future that we expect,” Arndt said.
Lastly, the report stresses the importance of adequately financing a shift to more sustainable production and consumption while increasing livelihoods.
This would cost as much as $350 billion a year, although much of the money could be “reoriented” from other sources. A report released last year by the Food and Agriculture Organization found that $470 billion worth of the subsidies spent on agricultural producers annually are economically and environmentally unsustainable and should be repurposed.
About one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system, including agriculture and land use, storage, transport, packaging, processing, retail, and consumption. Reductions in fossil fuel use from the energy and transport sectors will help, but two-thirds of food systems-related emissions come from agriculture, forestry, and other land use, which will require different types of solutions. There is great promise, IFPRI’s latest report notes, for land use to be a larger net sink for carbon, for example.
Arndt said that while strategies for reducing fossil fuel use exist and are more widely practiced, it’s not the case from a land use perspective.
“A lot of things that are in this report really represent a mainstreaming of climate into regular policy processes,” he said. “This is a big thing that we needed for a long time and it’s happening now.”
About the author
Teresa Welshtmawelsh
Teresa Welsh is a Senior Reporter at Devex. She has reported from more than 10 countries and is currently based in Washington, D.C. Her coverage focuses on Latin America; U.S. foreign assistance policy; fragile states; food systems and nutrition; and refugees and migration. Prior to joining Devex, Teresa worked at McClatchy's Washington Bureau and covered foreign affairs for U.S. News and World Report. She was a reporter in Colombia, where she previously lived teaching English. Teresa earned bachelor of arts degrees in journalism and Latin American studies from the University of Wisconsin.
